The Sampson’s Gatling guns roared to life, but the speed of the cylinders made targeting them more problematic. Several were picked off in midair, but one landed on the foredeck, transformed from white to red, and detonated. The explosion ripped through the ship. The windows on the bridge, made from reinforced glass that should have held together, blew apart. It was specially treated so as to shatter into dull pieces should breakage occur, and it performed as it had been designed to do. As a result, no one had to worry about getting shards of glass in their eyes. Still, the officers dropped to the floor to avoid the large chunks that were flying every which way.
“We’re hit!” shouted Sinclair.
“Signal all ships!” Stone shouted over the wailing klaxon. “Full reverse! We need battle space!”
The engine room responded immediately. The Sampson started to pull back. It wasn’t much; a ship as large as the Sampson wasn’t designed for quick maneuvers. But it was just barely enough to allow another cylinder to go screaming past them and land harmlessly in the water.
“Miss!” Sinclair called out.
The running narrative was beginning to annoy the crap out of Stone. “Save the play-by-play. Are we targeting this thing or not? Sling some MK 41s their way!”
His executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Leong, looked up from her instruments. “Sir, comm’s down again,” said the XO. “That thing that hit us … it scrambled everything that we had just gotten back online. Computers are down, radar’s down. All we’ve got are the close-in weapon systems.”
“All this hardware and we’re down to throwing rocks?” said Stone. He grit his teeth, seeing that the John Paul Jones was still under assault. “We’ve got to get in there. They need cover.”
“Five-inch was knocked off-line, but now is moments away,” said the XO.
“We’re not waiting,” said Stone. “Rudder hard right, engines full. We’ve got to get in there and give them some shade. Don’t tell me the gun’s not up.” Through his binoculars, he stared at the launcher on the opposing ship that had been firing those strange white cylinders at them. It had paused in its assault. They were probably reloading. He had no intention of sitting around waiting for them to finish the process. “Take that launcher out.”
With that order, the Sampson reversed course and hurtled forward, straight into the teeth of the enemy.
PACIFIC OCEAN, IMPACT POINT
In the crippled RHIB, Hopper watched with growing horror as he saw the Sampson angling straight toward the stinger.
“Screw this helpless crap,” he said, suddenly full of resolve. He shouted to Raikes as he pointed, “Where we saw that … that creature standing before! Shoot there! Maybe it’s their bridge or whatever!”
Raikes needed no further urging. She swung the .50 cal around and opened fire.
At first the bullets didn’t penetrate. Instead Hopper saw lights flashing in response to where the bullets would have been impacting. There was some sort of field there, invisible, impenetrable. Well, sure, because they’re freaking aliens, so naturally they have invisible shields and crap like that.
And then, all of a sudden, areas of the shield weren’t flaring back into invisibility as they had been before. Instead patches seemed to be hanging there randomly, black pieces of light as opposed to the other, unseen sections of the field. Spiderweb cracks spread through them, and Hopper immediately realized that—unlike the movies—the alien force fields weren’t limitless in their resistance. They might be pure energy, but they were no more invulnerable than “bulletproof” glass. Give it enough of a pounding, and it would eventually shatter and break.
“Pour it on, Raikes!”
He moved behind the .50, helping Raikes to pinpoint her assault, which she did with malicious glee. As that happened, though, something moving on the forward section of the stinger grabbed Hopper’s attention. He recognized it as the launch array that had fired off whatever the hell those weapons were that had impacted on the destroyers. It was rotating. Worse, it was rotating in their direction.
“We’ve got to move,” he said nervously.
“Want me to get out and push?” Raikes offered.
The engine abruptly roared to life. They looked around in delighted surprise. Beast was crouched over the engine, holding two wires that he had twisted together. He hurriedly wrapped them in electrical tape to keep the connection solid.
Hopper leaped over to the helm. He brought the RHIB around, but the cylinder launcher was swiveling to acquire him. There was no way he was going to be able to get enough distance between himself and the stinger before it unloaded its lethal charge upon him.
Then he heard the distant sound of a 5-inch gun being deployed. Seconds later, the ordnance from the Sampson, fired with pinpoint accuracy, obliterated the launcher before it could fire at Hopper and the RHIB.
Hopper exhaled in relief, but that breath caught in his throat as the stinger, with the faint sound of something within it powering up, launched itself once more, much farther than it had before. It sailed through the air and landed no more than a hundred feet aft of the Sampson, practically right on top of them.
Oh God, thought Hopper.
USS SAMPSON
Oh God, thought Stone, realizing that he was seeing technology that simply did not exist anywhere on Earth, not that he knew of. It’s true. We’re in the middle of an alien invasion.
A young helmsman stumbled back from his post, eyes wide with terror. On some level, Stone couldn’t blame him. These were the best and the brightest that the Navy had to offer, and they believed themselves to have been trained to handle anything that was thrown at them. But how the hell do you handle something that is completely outside the realm of anyone’s experience?
But that was no excuse for deserting one’s post. “Back on the con, Behne!” said Stone.
Seaman Behne nodded, retaking his position.
“Hard ahead, full,” said Stone.
“Aye, sir,” said Behne with determination, dialing up the throttle.
The powerful engines of the Sampson drove the vessel forward. The alien ship crouched low in the water. Like a lion in the high weeds, thought Stone bleakly, but once again he didn’t allow any of that worry to show. “Steady, people. WEPS, all guns forward, maximum rate of fire.”
The 5-inch guns of the Sampson were unleashed upon the alien ship. There were no more attempts at communication—they would do all their talking with their weaponry. Stone reasoned that since their guns had been able to take out that weird-ass missile launcher, they should likewise be able to inflict some serious damage on the rest of the ship.
His reasoning turned out to be severely faulty.
The alien vessel shuddered under the assault, little bursts of light erupting everywhere that the Sampson’s guns made contact. But it didn’t seem to be doing any substantial damage—they had some manner of force field.
Stone’s mind was already racing. It must be a limited resource. Otherwise we’d never have been able to take out that launcher. Perhaps they have to deploy it in specific areas of the ship, selectively. Right now they must have all their shields concentrated on forward assault. If we deploy the other ships around, surround it …
That was when he saw another barrage of those same bizarre cylinder weapons being fired their way. They were arcing straight toward Stone’s ship. Dammit! They must have a secondary launcher!
“Kill tracks! Fire at will! All of it!”
PACIFIC OCEAN, IMPACT POINT
“Gun it! Gun it!” Hopper shouted to himself for encouragement as he opened up the throttle
The RHIB hurtled through the water as fast as Beast could make it go, eating up the distance between them and the immediate field of battle. He continued to nurse the engine, though, making sure his patchwork job held together. Hopper steered straight toward the stinger, keeping on a steady path, praying he would get there in time.
The stinger withstood the pounding that the Sampson was unleashing upon it. It was as if
the strange vessel was sending a silent message: Go ahead. Take your best shot. Is that all you can do? Because we can do so much more.
From his angle Hopper could see the second weapons launcher rising from the side of the stinger. Raikes opened fire on it without even having to be told. It made no difference. This time the bullets pinged away without having the slightest impact.
Hopper didn’t hesitate. He brought the RHIB around in an arc, determined to place himself between the stinger and the Sampson. His hope was to distract it, provide an immediate nuisance, pull its attention away from the destroyer. Maybe even hurt it if he was close up to it. All he knew was that he had to protect the Sampson. He had to protect his brother. With one hand he had binoculars to his eyes, and he could actually make out Stone in the bridge, shouting orders, pointing, never losing control, never losing hope …
Then he heard a series of whooshing noises that he’d already come to recognize. It was those damned white cylinders. They were hurtling straight toward the Sampson, and Hopper could only watch in frustration and fury. He saw Stone monitoring them, calling out orders that Hopper couldn’t hear, no doubt ordering the deployment of the Phalanx CIWS. Hopper swung his binoculars toward the ship’s Gatling guns and, sure enough, they were blasting the incoming missiles away. But not enough of them.
Not remotely enough.
No less than ten hit their target, landing straight down all along the deck of the Sampson, from stem to stern. Ten white cylinders, in a row, and suddenly they transformed to red.
Hopper had just enough time to turn his binoculars back toward his brother. Stone wasn’t looking at the cylinders. He wasn’t even looking at the other men on the bridge. Instead he was staring straight toward Hopper, as if he could see him, as if he knew that Hopper had binoculars trained on him.
Stone had just enough time to mouth words that Hopper was actually able to make out. And they were: Stay out of trouble while I’m gone.
A massive explosion ripped through the Sampson. Hopper heard someone screaming. It was he himself. Something jolted him and he realized belatedly that he’d actually been trying to throw himself off the RHIB, as if he could leap through the air in a single bound, like Superman, and land at his brother’s side.
Except there was no brother for him to fly to. Not anymore.
The Sampson blew apart, flame ripping it from one end to the other. The ship shuddered, and metal screeched like a dying whale. He saw what looked like lightning bugs tumbling from the ship and realized it was sailors burning alive, their arms pinwheeling, falling into the water. Seconds later the ship’s spine cracked in two. It rolled, pitched, and then sank beneath the waves.
Its job apparently done, the stinger vaulted away, landing securely back in front of the towering metal array, a dutiful sentinel returned to its post.
The RHIB had ceased all forward motion. It bobbed in the water, the engine reduced to a gentle idling. Beast was keeping Hopper steady, on his feet. Hopper leaned against the controls, stunned, staring at where the mighty destroyer had once been.
“Hopper,” Beast said softly, “what do you …?”
There was a sudden thud behind them, and before Hopper and Beast could turn to see what it was, Raikes screamed, “Down!”
Without the slightest hesitation, Beast yanked Hopper to the deck. Machine-gun fire chattered in the air. Standing only a few feet away from Hopper was the creature he’d spotted up on the stinger. It was wearing its helmet, was fully armored, and it held some sort of knife in its hand. The blade was curved and serrated. Despite all the high-tech armament, clearly these things sometimes liked to get up close and personal.
But it wasn’t going to be getting close enough this time. Raikes unleashed the .50 cal on it, her fury over the fate of the Sampson causing her body to convulse—but doing nothing to deter her aim. “Die, you son of a bitch, die!” she shrieked. Bullets thudded all over its armor, and the alien trembled and shook. Hopper saw dark streaks of what he assumed to be the creature’s blood seeping down sections of its armor where the bullets penetrated. Riddled, the alien staggered to the side, its arms outstretched as if it had been crucified, and then it tumbled over the side of the RHIB. Water fountained from where it went in and then there was no sound, no movement.
“Hah! How do you like that? You dumb sack of shit!” Raikes was gasping for air, and then she stepped back from the machine gun, her hands trembling, her eyes wide. She forced herself to steady her breath, to calm down, and then slowly she composed herself and looked levelly at Hopper. She was still bristling with fury, but she had no place to put it, and it looked as if it was beginning to crash in on her. “What … what do we do now?” she asked, her voice shaking.
Never in his adult life had Hopper so felt like just curling up in a ball. Just going completely fetal, shutting the rest of the world out and maybe even going to sleep in the hope that—upon waking—he would discover matters had changed for the better.
Instead he thrust all of those feelings—all those emotions, all the grief and agony that threatened to crush him—down where they could be of no impediment to what he had to do now.
“Beast,” he said, stepping away from the throttle, “get us to the John Paul Jones.”
Without a word, Beast took over the throttle and gunned it. The small craft moved away from the scene, heading toward the illusion of security that the John Paul Jones seemed to provide. But Hopper knew there would never be anyplace safe in the world, ever again.
THE WHITE HOUSE
The President could scarcely credit what he was seeing. If he’d been informed about it secondhand, he would have questioned the reliability—if not the sanity—of the source. Looking at it now, though, he almost started to wonder about his own sanity.
What he was staring at, being played back to him on a screen in the Situation Room, was nothing less than a barrier constructed of the very Pacific Ocean itself. He certainly had experience with what nature was capable of accomplishing in Hawaii. Storms, typhoons, the best and worst that God, in His acts, had to offer. But what he was witnessing now was beyond anything he had ever seen. It seemed instead like something out of a fantasy movie, cooked up by a wizard as a weapon against another wizard.
Arthur C. Clarke’s oft-quoted statement ran through his head. “Any sufficiently advanced form of technology will seem like magic.” Still, it was so beyond anything he’d ever experienced that he had to remind himself that no, this wasn’t magic; just technology. Extremely advanced. Science against which no Earth technology had any counter. We are so screwed …
The film had been taken from a distance by a naval vessel and forwarded through channels—not only to him, but to heads of state from every country being represented in the war games, which were—at the moment—suspended. Apparently a real war had overtaken the games, fought against an enemy that was outside the experience of everyone involved.
Mountains of water, impassable, impenetrable, were arrayed around Oahu. From the latest intel on the President’s desk, there were three ships—two Americans, one Japanese—within the perimeter. Everyone else was stuck outside, cut off as a localized storm kept them at bay. Sheets of lightning rippled up and down the water barrier.
The Joint Chiefs sat around the table, waiting for the President to absorb what he was seeing. Meanwhile on another screen, CNN was on, muted, but the closed captioning was activated:
“Little is known beyond the fact that all communication with the island state went down at 12:20 Eastern Standard Time. Extreme weather is now cutting off Hawaii from the outside world. A probable connection to events in Hong Kong is being investigated.”
The President leaned back in his chair, studying the other screens, each depicting a site around the world that had also been damaged.
“Best guess?” said the President finally.
One of the Joint Chiefs sat forward, resting his forearms on the large table around which they were all grouped. “We don’t have a best guess, Mr. Presid
ent. Every single country that could possibly be behind this got hit themselves. No one was spared.”
“Which only means,” said another general, “it was no single country. Terrorists. It has to be terrorists …”
The chief of staff looked skeptical. “You’re telling me that the people who couldn’t even blow up a pair of sneakers coordinated something like this?”
“I’m saying the people who knocked down the Twin Towers coordinated something like this …”
The President shook his head. “No. No, I’m not buying it. Even on 9/11, they used standard Earth technology, Earth airplanes …”
“Mr. President,” the vice-president put up a hand as if he were in second grade. “You keep saying ‘Earth.’ Are you implying …?”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m saying it outright. I’m saying what Sherlock Holmes always said. That whenever you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains—however improbable—is the truth. Someone here want to try to sell me on the notion that that,” he pointed at the wall of water, “is within the realm of possibility, based on what we know current science can produce? Because I’m looking at that giant water wall, with lightning flashing all around it, and I’m telling you this is either the result of extraterrestrial science, or somewhere right now Zeus is instructing that the Kraken be released.”
“Sir,” the vice-president started again, “you’re talking about alien invasion. That’s … that’s the kind of thing you see in disaster movies. Not in real life.”
“Perhaps. Except how many New York landmarks have we seen blown up in those same disaster movies? Plus there was an episode of a television series, The Lone Gunmen, that centered around a plot to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center. Life imitates art, gentlemen. How many of you,” and he took in the entire table in a glance, “didn’t watch the Twin Towers collapsing a decade ago and feel as if, just for a moment at least, the world had turned into a Michael Bay movie?”